


Kara's baby pictures!

by softalex



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: AKA the ambiguously canon compliant 'baby pictures' fic that we all need, F/F, Fluff, Lena is weak for pretty girls and has zero self-control, Lucy Lane makes an appearance, a slight amount of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 10:46:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10829691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softalex/pseuds/softalex
Summary: In which Lucy Lane makes a discovery, Kara finds something from her past, Alex trusts her sister, and Lena Luthor has little self-control around pretty women.Featuring some backstory for the Danvers' sisters.





	Kara's baby pictures!

**Author's Note:**

> Note that this does contain some references to the impact Eliza's emotionally manipulative behaviour had on Alex.

There’s this small and unassuming metal capsule inside a cardboard box. It’s been there for nearly a decade. The box is one out of many on a row of shelves, all stacked with similar looking boxes. Most of them contain documents, files and reports, from the recent past. One of the boxes, however, holds a capsule, decorated with an insignia similar to and intending to be that of the House of El. This capsule was once inside the pod that brought Kara Zor-El to earth.

The contents of it were meant to give Kara something to remember her old world by.

Unfortunately, there had been one major miss. No one had told Kara about the capsule, nor its contents or whereabouts within the ship. It had been a spur of the moment action, and Kara’s mother didn’t think much of it when she tucked it in the back of the pod, many mornings before her daughter would board it.

Kara Zor-El landed on earth too late, far too late. Her cousin was not the baby she remembered but a grown man who towered over her with a glint of distrust and uneasiness.  
She left Krypton with a purpose, an objective. Protect her cousin, make sure their culture lives on. She arrived on earth, and her purpose was gone, ripped away from her.

– Welcome to earth, your world is gone, and you can’t fulfil the one promise you had made before they perished. –

Her cousin grew up alone, didn’t listen to his name, didn’t look at her as though they were of the same blood. His attempts at speaking their native language made Kara’s stomach churn. Her mother tongue, she corrected in her head. It’s not his language because she never taught him.

If Kara had known that she would never see her pod again once she stepped out of it, she might have taken a closer look, might have found the capsule. She didn’t. The ship was taken away, to an unknown location. There were many things she didn’t know.

Her time on Earth began with a surname; Kara Zor-El became Kara Danvers, an adoptive daughter and sister. Her past became a cover story, and the truth was to be kept secret.

The mother and father of the family trod on eggshells around her. Kara was nothing but grateful for Eliza Danvers’ care, but something was unsettling about the way she treated her compared with Alex. It felt foreign how Eliza distinguished them. Kara would understand if the distinction was flipped, that Kara was regarded with scepticism and scrutiny. She was after all a stranger in someone else’s house. Not to mention her barely controllable strength and the way the girl would panic and scream because soundwaves felt like knives to her soul and touch was suffocating. Back on Krypton, she would be sceptical of herself.

  
After seeing a ‘Talk Show’ on the television, the Alien came to conclude that Mr and Mrs Danvers, and to some extent Kal, both saw and treated her like a human child. She wasn’t sure what being a child on earth meant. On Krypton, the girl discussed politics with her mother and had access to her own laboratory.  She played with her cousins and family and took care of the smaller ones. She studied and was likely going to join the science guild, had it not been for, well, everything.

  
The television program only cleared up a few things; the distinction between child and adult, and the little expectations of a child. She still wasn’t fully on board with the ‘human child’ thing.

It didn’t bother her at first; the pampering from Eliza was pleasant, and the lack of responsibility was relieving during her hard times of grief and turmoil. But slowly, she grew. She stopped crying all day, didn’t hide under blankets in the dark of her room for weeks. Of course, she didn’t stop crying for good, not even for an unusually long time, but she stopped long enough to look around. This was a planet she had never seen before, filled with new and exciting things to learn. She had powers correlated to the rays of this world’s sun, wasn’t that strange and fantastic?

It took some time, but she befriended her new sister. She was a contrasting breeze of fresh air compared to the adults of the Danvers’ family.

– “Alex, not Alexandra!” She had told her once. Kara responded, “Okay,” and added a confused inquiry, “Does your mother not know about this?” At this point Alex had sulked, her head hanging low. “She doesn’t care. ‘I named you Alexandra, that is your name, and it is what I will call you.’ But it’s whatever.” –

Alex Danvers was honest, blunt, and abrupt; she was protective, but she didn’t act like Kara was a fragile piece of glass in constant need of sheltering and coddling. She held her accountable. Usually.

Kara did have bad days in school, her ever-present trauma and fear of abandonment resulted in unexpected breakdowns. On top of that, the bully shaped aftermath of these public breakdowns offered a new flavour of bad days for the youngest Danvers’ girl. Alex insisted to her parents that Kara needed to talk to someone, a therapist maybe, but they both shook their heads. (“Kara has to stay hidden. It’s not safe. She can talk to me, and your father just like you do.”) Alex sighed because on several levels they were so wrong, but she understood that Kara couldn’t just talk to any random therapist or counsellor.

It was safe to say that Kara had cried a lot in school, and the teacher would be left with no choice but to call Eliza or Jeremiah to pick her up. When Alex came home after these incidents, Eliza would scold her. She didn’t do this, didn’t do that, should have done this instead of that, and so on.

It developed into a pattern. Kara made a mistake, or visibly got upset, and Alex faced the consequences, because apparently ‘Kara didn’t know better’. She wanted to yell that just because she was sensitive and afraid and didn’t understand basic earth things – like birds or the television – that did not make her a helpless newborn with no capacity of making her own decisions and mistakes. She was part of the House of El, and that used to mean something.

But Kara didn’t understand earth, and her experience here was limited. Maybe this was just the way earth families functioned? She didn’t know, couldn’t know, didn’t want to intrude on this complex family hierarchy. So she remained silent in fear of making yet another mistake regarding humans. She learned how to behave around Eliza to minimise the scrutiny her sister received; offered Alex hugs and sweets. Along with Kara’s adjustment to Earth’s social rules and the decline of her public breakdowns, Eliza’s constant chewing stopped.

It became a rare occasion right up until her father’s death. Afterwards, it was a war-zone. Kara already felt immense guilt for Jeremiah, and Alex couldn’t bear to unload even more onto her little sister, knowing that she would blame herself for that too. Somewhere along the road, Alex stopped mentioning the harsh critique and disgruntled sighs she was given by Eliza.

Eliza too became more discrete and subtle with her reprimands. Eliza was completely unaware of her actions harm, – This was by no means a justification, merely an anecdote –  the way she would let her emotions fly when Alex voiced her concern. ‘Oh Alexandra, why must you always be so difficult’ – Her mother’s words were a bittersweet torture. Like paper cuts, they were individually small and insignificant, but they kept coming until she was covered from head to toe, more paper cut than a person.

Eventually, Kara grew used to the dynamic and stopped consciously questioning it.

The Danvers’ sisters grew closer with the passing years – they began trading stories about their childhood. – Alex showed her a book of photographs which was mostly filled with images of Alex, but some of Eliza and Jeremiah too. There was Alex as a baby, sitting in a high chair in front of a birthday cake, frosting all over her small face; Alex as a toddler, looking intently at a worm in a sandbox; Alex sitting on a pumpkin, dressed in a little lab rock that said ‘Scientist’.

After a few minutes, Alex had seen her sister’s expression falter, how her lip wobbled and her hands trembled. Kara explained that she had nothing of hers from before earth. Only what she wore in the pod – no images, nothing to remember her life with, nothing at all.

After this revelation Alex used some of her saved money to buy an instant camera, so she and Kara could immediately create pictures of new memories. It’s wasn’t the same as childhood pictures, but the albums of ridiculous photographies that they filled up are one of their fondest memories to this day.

 

PRESENT DAY, 11:12 AM, NATIONAL CITY.

It starts with a call from Lucy Lane. She’s been canvassing an old DEO building for a possible new training facility. The dust and cobwebs make it evident that the building hasn’t been maintained for a long time. She and a couple of agents sift through box after box of field reports and legal documents until suddenly, she’s handed a box that’s much lighter than the others. Lucy opens it, and both her and the three agents accompanying her, look into the box with confusion. Inside it lies only a small item. Major Lane picks it up and examines it in detail, noticing a highly familiar insignia on its surface.

(She speculates for a while that the metal item is a tiny spaceship with little Kryptonians and matching superpowers. Because – really – how come the aliens she’s seen are the size of Earth humans or bigger. Where are all the mouse-sized aliens?)

Furrowing her brow, she dismisses herself and exits the densely isolated building. She scrolls through her contacts and presses the call button.

 

Kara Danvers is in the middle of brunch with Lena Luthor.

While Lena opted for orange soda, Kara has filled her cup with a mixture of all the available fizzy drinks. (When questioned, the blonde simply replied “I can never decide which one I want, so I just take a bit of everything. It’s a great solution, and it’s so good!”)

Lena eyes the reddish brown drink suspiciously as the reporter waxes poetic about a dog on a billboard. “Look at it Lena; it's so fluffy!”

  
She curses her weakness for beautiful girls on a daily basis. If it weren’t for her strong self-control, she would probably have bought the woman a dog by now. Thinking about it, she probably already spent the average cost for a dog on filling her office with flowers.

(Okay, her self-control probably went out the window as soon as she heard Kara speak.)

  
Kara mumbles something about her sister and not being a puppy, but then her phone starts to vibrate, and she grimaces at the sound; offering Lena an awkward smile when she reaches into her bag. She takes a final bite of the remaining submarine sandwich before attempting to say, “Sorry,” through a mouthful of bread, lettuce, and chicken. Her exasperated expression fades as she is thrilled to see Lucy Lane’s name on her phone screen.

  
She swallows her bite quickly and answers the call. “Hi! Lucy, gosh, it’s been so long!” Kara exclaims, “How are you doing?”

  
Lucy chuckles, “I’m good. Unfortunately, this isn’t a social call. It’s – well, I’m not sure what it is – but it was either you or your cousin, and honestly, I’m not on the best terms with Lois right now so I'd rather not tackle that awkwardness right now.”

  
Kara’s crinkle is apparent as she scratches her scalp in confusion. “Right, uh. Could you be any more specific?”

  
“It’s nothing dangerous, but I think you better come take a look yourself.”

  
Lena listens intently to Kara’s side of the exchange. She initially feels a tinge of jealousy and frowns when Kara’s expression scrunches up. An ex, perhaps?

  
The blonde rubs her neck, “I–I’m kind of in the middle of something right now?” The pitch of her voice rises when she sees Lena looking directly at her with an amused smirk.  
Kara mouths an apology to Lena, who shakes her head and places a calloused hand on top of the blonde’s, gently squeezing it. “Don’t worry.” She responds.

  
Kara feels her heart skip a beat before remembering that Lucy is still on the line. “Uh, did you say something?” She asks. Lucy pauses, “Yeah, I said– Hang on; Kara Danvers, are you on a date?” The former Major exclaims, sounding less and less military and more like a teasing friend.

  
Kara’s eyes shoot up she stutters, “What – no, I– Lucy!” She sputters, blood rushes to her cheeks, and she looks down at their touching hands. Lena can hear a faint laugh coming from the phone.

  
“Oh my god, you are!” Lucy teases. Kara squirms and lowers her voice. Bashful giggles interrupt her speech, “No, Lucy. I’m not– I’m not on a date.”

  
The Major isn’t the slightest convinced, but she’s also on a schedule and really needs Kara to pick up the peculiar capsule as soon as possible. “I’ll text you a picture, trust me, you’ll want to see this. Make sure your date doesn’t see it.”

  
“I’m not on–” The call ends. Kara looks up at Lena “That was weird. I’m sorry about the call, I really wanted to hang out with you without any interruptions.”

  
She puts her hand on Kara’s shoulder. “Really, It’s no problem at all. You can’t control if someone calls you.” The brunette takes a deep breath and sighs. “I assume you have to leave?”

 

“Yeah, kind of.” She’s regretful and pushes her glasses up her nose as she stammers out the confirmation.

“I’m not sure what it is – I haven’t heard from Lucy in ages – but it seemed important.” A text message pops up on her screen, and she opens the image attached to it.

  
Her eyes grow wide and her entire posture shifts. It’s a picture of a metal box of some kind, not much bigger than her own lunchbox – but to be fair Kara’s lunch box isn’t close to the smallest one available on the market. It has the House of El insignia on it, but it’s blotchy and messy as though it was painted by a child. It was painted by a child – one very particular child.

Her friend leans over the small table to look at the screen and the blonde rushes to lock her phone. Standing up, she passes a glance at Lena, tears forming in her eyes. “I have to go. I’ll call you later, okay?”

The youngest Luthor feels a constricting pang of worry in her chest. She hugs Kara back extra tightly before they part, to communicate what she lacks the words to say.

As soon as she’s out of Lena’s periphery, Kara blasts off, locating Lucy by the sound of her heartbeat.

Her feet hit the ground, and she’s right in front of a woman she hasn’t seen for what feels like a lifetime. There’s a lump in her throat and a stinging sensation in her eyes when Lucy hands over the capsule. Before she leaves, she wraps the small woman in a bone crushing hug. “Rao, I missed you so much!” She says, and Lucy responds with an awkward pat on the hero’s back before returning the hug in earnest. Shortly after that, she pants, “Supergirl? I kind of need to breathe.”

Kara releases her and grins sheepishly, “Sorry.“

Major Lane instructs her to take the capsule back to the DEO to examine, and after a not nearly long enough conversation, Kara has to leave again. Before leaving, she asks if Lucy could come visit soon and to her pleasant surprise the woman tells her that she ‘might show up sooner rather than later.’

(She ignores the smirk and the promise to ‘find out who her mystery not-date was’)

She is immediately met by a frowning Alex when she reaches the DEO. She asks what the vaguely disconcerting string of text messages Kara sent to her mean. “Kara, what is happening?” Alex punctuates every word in the sentence to emphasise her concern.  “Later.” Kara croaks out, throat thick and voice quivering.

The air is still thick with confusion as Kara leads Alex to a more private area. No need for the entire workplace to see this right now, she thinks.

 

When they reach the room, Kara unclenches her tight grip around the object of her sister’s curiosity. There’s no time to question it before Kara turns it to show her the insignia.

 

A look of understanding and shock dawns on Alex Danvers’ face, and her features soften. “Is that–?”

 

“It’s from my pod. Lucy found it.” Kara interrupts. “I haven’t opened it yet; I’m scared, Alex.”

 

The agent takes her younger sister’s hand, “I’m here for you.” She says.  

 

The capsule opens with a creaking noise. There are two objects in it. One is a marble of some sort, and the other resembles the mp3 player Alex had in college. It has three buttons and a long ridge with what appears to be small circular lamps or crystals. She looks at her sister, expecting to find disappointment, but instead finding nothing short of a sheer delight.

 

Kara picks the item up fully intending to press one of its buttons, and special agent Danvers takes the command while Alex Danvers, sister, is pushed to the backseat. “Wait!”

There are rules for this, they can’t just go around pressing buttons on unidentified alien objects. Every part of the agent's training is telling her to follow protocol, to examine and take precaution.

 

The blonde looks at her, eyes brimming with unshed tears. “Are you sure it’s safe?” Alex asks, instead of the memorised rules repeating in her mind. Alex might be a stone cold agent in the face of her colleagues, but her puppy dog sister can bend her like the most malleable of substances.

It’s not as though she’s allowing her to press a big red button with a sign that says ‘don’t push’. “See this awkward looking insignia? I painted this as a child.”

 

Alex nods, gestures for her sister to proceed. Kara presses a button she recognises, and the crystal studded line lights up and a light blue interface, similar to Alura’s hologram, flashes before them.  

 

She places it back on the table and turns on the hologram copy of her mother.

“Good day, how can I–”

 

Kara interrupts the standard greeting phrase. “What is this?” Her voice is soft like she knows what the item is but can’t believe it. The hologram responds, “It is an image and motion picture player, used to store recordings.”

 

Kara releases a worried breath, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears as she places her hand in the blue interface. She swipes her hand in various directions, opening what Alex guesses to be a folder. In front of them is no longer the blue holographic interface but a projection of a sleeping baby, wrapped in a dressing gown. With a flick of her wrist the image changes, now of a. Alura holding the baby from the previous picture.

 

The blonde is awed, “Rao, that baby is me.” Only a handful of pictures later, they reach one of an older Kara. She looks to be around seven, braids in her hair and dressed in a gown next to three other children. They’re all smiling and holding hands. “I remember this.” She whispers, taking hold of her sister’s hand.

 

Alex is slack-jawed and fully amazed by the display in front of her. These are images of her sister, actual pre-earth pictures of her sister. She feels a teardrop roll down her cheek and tightens her grip around Kara’s hand, “This is incredible, Kara.”

  
The Kryptonian is far less composed than the agent, tears and snot running freely as she turns, lounging herself at Alex and burying her face in the crook of her neck as she weeps. “I never thought I’d see any of this again.”

  
Her breath is ragged, and she collects herself enough to resume viewing the documentation of a childhood she thought was lost. The pictures aren’t in chronological order, so every image is a complete surprise. One is of Kara lying in the lap of a girl with crisscrossed goddess braids. Their hands are intertwined, and they’re smiling. Behind them, Rao shines through the window, illuminating their features with a warm glow.

 

The image looks to have been taken without Kara knowing it. Alex waits patiently for her to say something about it, to give context to this part of her life that the older woman previously couldn’t partake in.

 

“That’s Zara. Rao, how could I have forgotten this?” She’s blushing, and for a moment her mind goes back to the past. For a moment she’s eleven again, confessing her feelings for a noble daughter of Krypton.  

 

She’s eleven again – so young and innocent – blissfully unaware of the impending doom around the corner.

 

There is a weighty pause before the agent carefully asks for more information.

  
She asks, because she’s never heard of her, and from the looks of it Zara was once very close to her sister. She asks because she’s never heard of her, and Alex can’t help but wonder if – subconsciously – it was because Kara learned that romance on earth was between a man and a woman, that she pushed away memories just like Alex did to fit in, moulded herself after society’s expectations.

 

Kara sees the inquisitive look in her sister’s eyes and explains. One statement repeatedly rings through her mind, and it strikes a metaphorical chord with her now.

(“I shoved that memory so far down – it’s like it never happened. I'm remembering stuff like that now.”)

 

The phrase her sister said when she came out began as a ripple, and it has gradually been growing into a wave. It collides now, with a great tide of the information Kara has just taken in. The wave comes crashing down when she starts to make connections between memories, and its impact triggers the release of long forgotten memories.

 

  
Her voice is raw and cracking with emotion when she tells her sister about Zara Ve, the candid girl from a noble family, who only lived in Kandor for a year or two, and moved before Kal was even born. She tells her of the soft kisses that she suddenly remembers, the butterflies in her stomach and the joy she felt.

 

Alex tilts her head to the side contemplating the disclosure. It is one thing to know offhand that Krypton didn’t have the same standards as Earth, even if it was a relatively patriarchal society. Is another thing entirely to hear her sister, whom she to all intents and purposes has assumed to be exclusively interested in men, actually admit that she has had feelings for, even kissed, a girl.

  
“So Krypton was very accepting with the–, you know, girls dating?” Alex has to know, has to ask, because it seems almost too good to be true.

 

“Courting,” Kara corrects, “We liked each other, but Kryptonian relationships were arranged; political and strategic – not ‘frivolous emotional spurs’.” Her eyes roll as she emphasises the last words. “Her family’s words, not mine. She was already betrothed to another noble daughter at the time, a girl she’d never met.”

 

Alex huffs, “Knew it sounded too good to be true.” She takes in her sister’s sagging form; how her breathing is even but visibly strenuous for her.

“You okay?”

  
She is. She isn’t. Her head is spinning with a thousand and one thoughts. She’s overwhelmed and excited because she has actual childhood pictures of herself. She has pictures of her parents and friends. She wonders if there are pictures of her dog Krypto, the silliest pup in the universe. Her stomach rumbles, emitting a gurgling sound. Doing a lot of emotional labour makes a girl hungry. After a long moment of silence, Kara looks at her sister’s with a glint in her eye. “I want pizza." She says, "And potstickers, Alex do you think we could have sister-night tonight? Or friend-night; we could invite all the Superfriends and show them this!”

 

Alex might see through the deflection like a glass window, but she still finds the sudden enthusiasm for food to be endearing. “I think a sister night would be awesome. I also believe you should meet me in the training room. You’re sitting on so many pins and needles that it wouldn’t surprise me if J’onn could sense it.”

Kara raises her eyebrows, ready to defend herself, “I’m standing up, Alex.”

 

But her resolve falters, and she shakes her head, because yes, she could really use an emotional outlet right now. She could use an outlet for her repressed feelings, and she could use some pizza. Seriously, she wants a pizza.

 

That evening, Alex orders several extra-everything pizzas just for her.

**Author's Note:**

> i miss lucy lane :(
> 
> (question: is she still a major even if she's the director of the DEO? like, major is a rank and director is just a title, isn't it? i have no idea rip me)  
>  
> 
> please leave constructive criticism on my language so my swedish ass can get better at english


End file.
